VIDEO: Police Pursuits Have Killed 108 People in Chicago Area in Last 10 Years
Video: Police Pursuits Have Killed 108 People in Chicago Area in Last 10 Years
In the majority of cases, it’s not the fleeing driver or fleeing passengers who are getting killed or injured: It’s a pursuing officer or – most often – an innocent bystander.
May 6, 2016
A Chicago TV news investigative team has spent the past two months tracking down information on every Chicago-area police pursuit that resulted in injury or death. The investigators found that in the past ten years, 141 pursuit-related crashes in the Chicago area resulted in 108 people getting killed, and another 216 people hurt.
In the majority of cases, it’s not the fleeing driver or fleeing passengers who are getting killed or injured: It’s a pursuing officer or – most often – an innocent bystander.
And – lately – the numbers have been going up, dramatically. For example, NBC5 Investigates found 18 innocent bystanders were killed as a result of police pursuits in the Chicago area between 2006 and 2012. That’s 18 innocent people, killed over a seven-year period – an average of two or three innocent deaths each year.
But in just the three years since – 2013 to now – 18 more innocent bystanders have been killed – meaning the rate has jumped threefold, in just the past three years.
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